Ahri's Balance, "Not Battlecast" Anivia, and Why MMR is hidden.

While I don't have any news on ZAC or the delayed patch, I do have a wonderful batch of red posts for you!

Continue reading for posts about Ahri's balance, the "Not Battlecast" Anivia skin, and why match making rating is hidden.

Ahri's Balance
While responding to a thread about Ahri, Morello shared that the live team is currently happy with Ahri's balance.

"Talking to the team, we're currently happy with Ahri - not any changes coming in. In this meta, she actually thrives quite a bit and is still one of the best roaming mids there is."

Replying to come criticism on his previous statement, Morello defended his comment that Ahri is fine in the current meta by saying:

"Well if a champ has a set of circumstances that are realistic in which that champion can perform (Kog'Maw performs better when poke is strong, for example) then it can be reasonably concluded that the champion has a viable place in League. That's desirable, so there's different options for different strategies."

Any news on "Not Battlecast" Anivia?
Since we are all excited to see the leaked "Not Battlecast" Anivia skin, I figured I'd let you know that Morello is still refusing to tell us more about it! When asked if it was finished yet or if we could get an update on it, he responded:

"No, and no :P

No word until it's out, and no word on when that is. :)"

For those who needed a refresher, here is a leaked image of the upcoming Anivia skin.

Why MMR is hidden
When asked why we can't see our currently hidden match making ratings ( MMR ), Montag responded by sharing that third party sites only estimate their own MMR and explaining why Riot has chosen to hide player's MMR.

"We use a highly customized algorithm to calculate your MMR and match you with teammates. LoLking may be able to estimate your elo according to their own algorithm, but we haven't used the strict elo algorithm for a long, long time, so I wouldn't trust it as an exact measure of your own rating.

As far as why we hide it, Zileas made a great post about why we hide MMR in Normals. (Amélie Poulain got it exactly right: stress.) Our decision to hide MMR in ranked is similar but with a slightly different goal. It allows matchmaking to be abstracted from what you perceive to be your competitive progression, because they aren't the same thing. League placement, not MMR, is really what matters at the end of the day. It's what season rewards will be based on and it's how the top ranked teams will be chosen for Path to Pro qualifiers. With a few exceptions, MMR should be largely irrelevant to the average player, and we're working on smoothing those over as well. We think that the experience of playing ranked is much better when it's through the league system, and exposing MMR would undermine that and cause everyone to go back to just focusing on a single number while glossing over the small wins -- promotion matches, moving up in your own league, etc -- that you're getting all the time."